As gentle as baby's breath and as strong as the wind she flew to them on the soft wings of night. Wrapped in delicate shrouds of song and blanketed by fathomless shadows of dark places, she rose alone. Something had already called her to this place. Years and centuries, as long as she could remember the call had come for her. She transcended her mortal skeleton and joined the energy again. Forms and shapes and colors. That was all nothing in this world. Thoughts and concepts were everything. They were her shade, her sun, her moon and her heart. They called her softly. Whispers licked her ears as she rode the iron horse. And all the while she had never known exactly what is was that called her. They had said many things to her. She had heard the voice of the blood, the scream of death, the longing of breath. She had been told it was God, it was Satan, it was nothing, it was all in her head. Still she ran the inevitable course. Running far away from the dark iron horse. Running with night's speed across India. Like the sky that flashed crimson as it fell in a wink into darkness. As solid as change she had been drawn to her fate, on harp strings and winter frost. The many cards of death had been laid before her. And as tied up in veins as she was, she transcended, with each breath, one step closer to the truth. She stole the heat from the morning sun and pocketed the strength from Chaos. Running on water and sleeping on empty dreams she had wandered through all mortality. The seven secrets and the mysterious eighth. She had known the first secret of sorrow. She had lived for the second secret of joy. She had known herself to be a girl and had known the love of a boy. She had dreamed of gold and found it was silver she really wanted. And she found herself surrounded by the seventh secret, the one never to be told. Alone in this she had pondered. On the cliff of demise she had thrown the three sands over the edge and walked away from herself only to find she had thrown a part of her over the cliff with them. Blind mistakes of agony and pride and humanity she had made. Consumed by pain and drowned in her tears. Seven years had followed her closely. And the seven secrets had forced her to them. She had heard it said that one must accept one's fate. She did not know any better. She had never known anything else till that bright day, when in the light of Orion, she had fallen prey to those stormy blue eyes, the lovely mass of blonde hair and the strong arms of safety. She had never known how it could be till she felt those soft red lips brush against her own. Till she had tasted his mouth and breathed his breath. How could she have known that to stray from her fate was to ask for death. But it would not have mattered had she known, the pull from those stormy eyes were stronger than any power she could have imagined. The joy she had known on those soft spring nights of oil derricks, wind songs, and cold marble, were nothing she could have anticipated, left, or lost, without losing herself. But when the music played and the waves crashed and she didn't know that he spoke of lights in the sea anymore, it was all lost. Lost in tears and tangled embraces and questions with no answers. And something with stormy blue eyes was ripped from her on that mountain. She died with it. But the voices still called her so strongly. The Gods played with her fate and she could not leave this earth. She hated them for their games called Hope. Psyche, before she had lost her moon maiden, had offered everything for another fingernail moon and handful of silk. But she had nothing to give anymore. Voices passed her by in the silence. She sat alone on her cliff and beat her breast and tore her hair and gave the wail of sorrow. She locked her memories and her dreams away, in a spider box, deep inside her womb. Her marzipan castles were sieged and her sugar plum faeries were burnt at the stake. For the love of soft spring nights, cold marble, lights on the sea, and stormy blue eyes, had left her far from herself. Locked in a bank vault without the keys to the safety deposit boxes. She lived and she breathed but she no longer felt. Only those early mornings when the wind and the rain woke her to the sound of her crying, did tears flow for the lack of those stormy eyes. Eventually, it was all over and done with. Passed like the seasons. It merely took summer and autumn to show her the way of winter. She had followed the call into the downward spiral. Razors and magic white powders had bewitched her nearly into eternity. But the Gods decided to stop her from destruction for they were not yet done with her. She had not learned all the secrets and therefore could not depart from this earth. Then came the night when she encountered those eyes again. Only they did not belong to the same man. They belonged to an angel of the gods. Apollo must have bedded the finest mortal woman in existence to birth this beautiful child. Sea green eyes and innocence played with his features. Soft falls of damask colored his lips. The angel stole her breath and showed her Heaven again. The Gods had sent down one of them to capture her heart and unlock her spider box. The dreams came back and the song came back. And it all floated on the kiss of Mt. Olympia's lips and power of the sea bull. Never had she beheld such a creature. Never would she have guessed that the cruel Gods would send such temptation to her heart. But the seventh secret must never be told. This angel surely could not know it. The Gods never tell their secrets. And she never told hers. The angel did not love her and she knew it. And so she left on a bird and flew home to where the ocean meets the land and the souls of the dead leave the earth. She came home to her Purgatory. Something in her hoped to find the stormy blue eyes again, or at least the moon maiden's shelter from the storm. The Gods were cruel again of course, for she found nothing but the past and her Hell in Purgatory. The Gods were determined to break her she thought. She felt broken and had screamed it to the Gods in all her humility so they would leave her alone. But the Gods sent Father Time and Mother Nature down to speed her on her way towards the eighth secret. "I know enough!," she screamed to the north wind. "Let me be! I do not wish anymore!" But the voices pulled her farther and the God's game of Hope made her play. The past opened it's gaping maw for her and swallowed her whole. Lost in the bowels of the beast she became tied up in veins again. And now she sat here, watching Father Time run by her and Mother Nature nag in her hear. It all meant nothing in the end. The Gods were just as lost as she was. The great bird was coming to take her back to the sea green eyes and the shattered hearts. She could not escape her fate. She knew, only once, something better and something different from this. Love raped her soul. The Gods raped her sanity. Beaten and shivering she rode the iron horse on her inevitable course towards her fate. Staring the Gods in the face, she galloped on towards them, faster and faster. She urged the horse on because she could not stand the feeling of the interim. And she was racing now. Her hair as gentle as baby's breath and her adamant decision as strong as the wind. She came alone to this sacred place of song and shadow. Transcending her mortality and following the path of licking whispers. She rose with night's wings on the silently violent sky. Hands of ivory, lips of heat, and heart as gray and as cold as the stone she was sacrificed upon, she rode the dark iron horse towards her Fate.